


Ever After Looks a Lot Like This

by It_MightBe_Love



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Cop!Mickey, Future Fic, M/M, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-06
Updated: 2013-03-06
Packaged: 2017-12-04 12:43:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/710915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/It_MightBe_Love/pseuds/It_MightBe_Love
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mickey doesn't figure he's cut out for things like ever after, but somehow he ends up in one anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ever After Looks a Lot Like This

**Author's Note:**

> I accidentally fic'd on tumblr. As always this is very loosely beta'd.

I want some kind of future fic. Where like… fucking Ian goes away to Westpoint and then on to be an Officer and he doesn’t look back.  
  
He and Mickey say goodbye at the goddamn airport and that’s it, just Ian smiling that stupid dopey smile that Mickey kind of hates and kind of never wants to lose and Ian is just his regular, dumb old, “Hey… take care of yourself. I’ll come back.” And Mickey blows him off because Mickey never learned to believe in ever afters.  
  
The rest of the Gallagher’s are all around them and if Mickey were a different sort of person he’d think they were deliberately shielding them from the rest of the world so they can say good bye. But Mickey isn’t a different kind of guy so instead he snorts and kisses Ian once. Because that’s all he’ll let himself have and he says, “No you won’t. You’re gonna get the fuck outta here and take your too good family with you and you’re gonna be happy. Or I’m gonna find you and blow your shit for brains head off.”  
  
And that’s it. Ian gets on his stupid ass plane and Mickey leaves the airport and doesn’t return any of the calls the Gallagher’s leave him. He does a pretty good job of avoiding them too for a couple of weeks. He hears that Ian sent his commission bonus to Fiona and she bought a tiny, cheap ass house up on the other side of the city. It ain’t a great neighborhood but it’s by a park that don’t get dead bodies left in it. So Mickey figures everyone’s doing fine.  
  
Mickey? Mickey bribes Mandy into taking her GED. She ain’t dumb and he figures she could go to work as a receptionist or some shit. (She goes into dental hygienistry or some shit because she likes teeth and she’s a wacko like that; but she’s happy and Mickey thinks that’s good enough. He ain’t ever been a good brother, wasn’t even capable of being a good person. Not for any of the people he loved but he can do this one thing right by Mandy).  
  
What he isn’t expecting is for fucking Lip Gallagher to show up on his doorstep with a sheaf of papers a foot wide, cigarette hanging from his stupid, do-gooder mouth saying crap like, “The Chicago P.D. is taking applicants to the academy.”  
  
  
Like Mickey was ever gonna be a fucking cop? Really? But Lip is smart, and slick as shit and somehow Mickey gets invested in the idea of something better for himself. It beats laying around his dad’s shit ass house all day getting the crap kicked out of him at any rate.  
  
Mickey thinks it’s kind of out of character for a Milkovich to become a cop, but Mickey ain’t ever had nothing but the most respect for Tony and Mickey kinda likes the idea of stickin’ it to his old man the only way he knows how. The idea is cemented when Lip drags Mickey in to the academy and he meets Chief O’Neily, a six and a half foot bear of a man who tells him in no uncertain terms that if he gets in to the school they have a no tolerance policy for bullshit. (O’Neily has been with the same man for thirty years and has two adopted kids. His daughter just started the fifth grade, she looks like Mandy did at that age. Too much hair and not enough teeth).  
  
Everything sort of steamrolls Mickey after that and it gets easier to lose touch with his old crew from the neighborhood. He makes a couple friends at the academy which surprises the fuck out of him, he keeps in contact with Lip who is of all things, at the University of Chicago getting a degree in bioengineering or some smart shit. He avoids the rest of the Gallagher’s like the plague and focuses on physical training and passing his tests.  
  
  
He graduates early, top of his class at twenty. Mandy shows up on the arm of some abercrombie meathead with a nice smile named ‘Clive’. Mickey doesn’t ask questions, but he’s licensed to carry now and he’s a cop so it’s pretty easy to put the fear of God and Mickey Milkovich into the dude should he ever think about hurting his kid sister.  
  
He pulls Lip over for speeding a few weeks into his tenure as a junior officer for the Chicago Police Department, it’s so goddamn hilarious they both spend ten minutes laughing before Lip invites Mickey out for drinks that night and Mickey figures why the fuck not.  
  
He learns that Ian finished training at Westpoint and got fast-tracked into some covert ops branch of the Army and the Gallagher’s ain’t heard from him in a few months save the occasional email or post card. Mickey takes a second to realize it’s been almost three years since he saw the redhead and he orders another round of drinks for the bar.  
  
He and Lip get resoundingly shitfaced and mickey wakes up with the mother of all hangovers and Debbie Gallagher leaning over him with a cup of coffee and a perplexed look on her face.  
  
  
“When the hell did you become a cop?”  
  
The Gallagher’s are the kind of parasitic fungus you can’t get rid of. Like black mold they creep into every facet of Mickey’s life. He starts shopping with Fiona because she knows this fucking fantastic organic grocer and Mickey will under pain of death admit, that he likes supporting local growers. (They’re also cheaper than every chain store he’s been too and it ain’t like he’s cooking big meals).  
  
Mandy and Clive break up and she moves into Mickey’s tiny ass studio apartment, which springboards him into finding a bigger place because he loves his sister but he actually *does* enjoy his privacy and a guy doesn’t need to know some things about his little sister’s sex life. (Namely that his sister is into some seriously kinky shit, and Mickey figures it’s hereditary. He locks his shit up in a box under the bed after that).  
  
It hits him around his Thanksgiving invite to the Gallagher’s that he’s actually happy. Not content, or fucking shit up. He’s got a decent job with shit pay that he likes. His sister is almost done with school, he ain’t seen his father or brothers in years and he’s healthy. (He has four friends he’s close to and a partner with a shit sense of humor who eats total garbage and he’s making detective by the end of the year).  
  
He’s almost twenty three and it’s been six years. He only spends the half awake moments at the mirror thinking about Ian Gallagher and his stupid, goddamn smile.  
  
He goes to a New Year’s thing with his partner Ricky (‘Stay the jokes Gallagher, we get that shit enough downtown’), and Lip and they do shots off some Brazilian dancer who leaves Lip her number and her lipstick down Mickey’s shirt collar. (He ain’t interested, Ricky had glitter bombed him before they’d gone out and mickey is enough of a man now to admit that he’s okay with the gay thing, but Ricky’s getting his ass super-glued to something in the future for the glitter).  
  
Ricky abandons them somewhere around three in the morning and Mickey goes back with lip to crash on the couch. he’s too drunk to drive and Lip’s license has been suspended, (too many speeding infractions and fuck if it ain’t weird that words like ‘infraction’ are part of Mickey’s regular vocabulary nowadays).  
  
He wakes up on the couch in his boxers and Ian Gallagher settled on the armchair across from him sipping coffee from a cracked mug that mickey recognizes as the one he left here from his last impromptu sleepover.  
  
Ian… Ian looks good. Taller and broader and the veins in his forearms stand out in stark relief against the muscles. He’s tanner, and Mickey can see the outline of ink underneath his shirtsleeves and collar and -  
  
“It’s wait to fucking early for the creep-show, Gallagher.”  
  
Ian grins, “Lip told me you’re a cop now?”  
  
Mickey pushes himself upright and rubs a hand through his hair and wishes for death, or aspirin or - Ian hands him the coffee.  
  
“I just made Detective.” He hates how proud he sounds of himself. He thought he’d be past trying to prove himself to people by now but apparently he isn’t.  
  
The smile Ian gives him makes the breath catch in Mickey’s throat and he hides behind the rim of the coffee mug for safety or safe keeping.  
  
“Congratulations.” And they taper off into one of the most awkward silences Mickey has experienced in a while.  
  
Debbie interrupts them, mostly because she’s been waiting for Mickey to come back by and show her how to take apart a gun, she’s doing some volunteer thing with the police department called the Rangers, and Mickey figures if she’s made it to fifteen without properly handling a gun then she needs to start learning.  
  
It’s easy to fall into the rhythm with her and ignore the rest of the house waking up, Fiona making breakfast. Ian stays in the armchair the whole time and only interrupts when Fiona comes in to drag Debbie away for school.  
  
“So you’re tight with my family now? But you don’t say anything to me in what? Six years?”  
  
It’s the first thing Ian says to him after his strange wake up call. The house is quiet and Mickey is looking around for his clothes and hoping Fiona didn’t decide to throw them in the wash like last time.  
  
“I never promised you anything Gallagher.” Is Mickey’s response, he’s trying to busy himself by the sink, piling breakfast dishes into it in the hopes that Ian will drop the fucking subject.   
  
What he gets is the redhead bracketing him against the counter, a hard line of muscle all down his back and it sends signals straight to his balls. Mickey swallows back a rough breath and turns to shove the man away from him.  
  
Ian’s grin is sharp like a knife and inches from his mouth, “Maybe not out loud. But Lip’s a talker.” Mickey’s fingers are moving involuntarily to tangle in the worn cotton of Ian’s shirtfront, he wants to hate himself for how much he missed this idiot but it’s kind of hard to communicate that to his extremities.  
  
Ian seems so sure of himself and it pushes Mickey off kilter, he hasn’t been that sure of himself since before Ian left.  
  
“I didn’t wait for you. Whatever you thought we were you’re wrong.”   
  
Ian laughs, one of his hands circling the back of his neck, “When it comes to you Mick, I’m never wrong.”  
  
And then of course the dryer starts buzzing and Mickey’s phone rings and he has to get his spare uniform from the closet in the hallway and leave and he never gets that goddamn kiss from Ian.  
  
It’s all he can think about the rest of the day, it rests like a stone in the bottom of his stomach. pulls at his diaphragm every now and then when Ricky says something or they’re booking some hapless dealer. He’s exhausted by the end of the day and all he wants is to go home and collapse into bed and forget he ever knew Ian Gallagher.  
  
Mickey will admit that introspection isn’t exactly his strong suit. He learned a lot about himself in school, how to articulate himself well. How to dress, clean fuck he even learned how to cook shit that didn’t come from a box; but he never learned how to get over Ian fucking Gallagher and he thinks, letting himself into his townhouse that evening, that he should have spent more time on that than the other things.  
  
Ian Gallagher leaves him a wreck of things better left behind.  
  
The lights are on in the kitchen and Ian is chopping something at the counter, chatting amiably with Mandy and Mickey has to bite his tongue to keep from shouting.  
  
This isn’t some fucking Lifetime movie, Mickey isn’t a wronged heroine. He let Ian go because Mickey didn’t have anything to offer. Nothing worthwhile and all the pieces Mickey has left are tied up in other people’s lives. He doesn’t have anything left of himself that Ian didn’t take with him.  
  
Mandy notices him first and smiles that secret Milkovich smile she got from their Mother, and high-tales it out of the kitchen and Mickey is just standing there, shoes in one hand, coat over his arm and he feels poleaxed.  
  
He doesn’t even remember where he learned that stupid word, but that is exactly how he feels.   
  
He’s gone full on Brian Kinney gay, because the arch of Ian’s feet look vulnerable against the dark wood floor and he looks *right*. Barefoot in Mickey’s kitchen.  
  
His shoes hit the floor and he’s yanking Ian into a kiss before he can let himself start second guessing what this means. Ian, in his kitchen like he belongs there.  
  
Ian’s hands wrap around Mickey’s jaw and gentle the kiss, until it’s something that resembles adult and nothing like how Mickey thought it would be. or should be. he doesn’t even care anymore.  
  
“Nothing you’re cooking can’t be left right?” Mickey says, Ian is already pushing him out of the kitchen.  
  
Ian’s teeth are a sharp knife to the tender skin of Mickey’s throat, “Yeah, was just prepwork.”   
  
“Good.” Is said with the finality of Mickey’s door and that’s pretty much it.  
  
Mickey is still a cop in Chicago. it’s weird, made weirder when a few months later he ends up seeing one of his brothers on charges of attempted larceny.   
  
Ian is on leave for an indeterminate amount of time, he took a bullet to the knee wherever he was and he’s seeing a physical therapist in the city and sleeping in Mickey’s bed when he isn’t there or visiting his family.  
  
Mickey has no idea how this became his life, he still doesn’t believe in ever afters, but if this is as close as he ever gets to one, he’s keeping it.


End file.
